When you think about it, horse racing handicap is really a money game. We use money to bet our opinions, and if they are correct, we get more money to continue playing the horses, but if our bets don’t work out, we run out of money and our method is suspect.
It all comes down to judgment and money management. It’s not really about speed numbers, class, connections, pace or form. It’s money and concept. Judgment in financial matters amounts to making the right choice when presented with options and benefiting from that decision. Once a profitable move is found, it is repeated as often as possible as long as the results stay within the acceptable range of risk and reward.
You can call them horse racing angles or point plays. They can be profitable trainer moves or play angles. You can bet the progeny of a particular bull that has proven itself on a given track, like Aragorn on the Turf at Del Mar, or the colts and fillies of a bull on a particular surface, like the Hennessy youngsters that seem to favor All Weather runway surface.
It doesn’t really matter which angle you use, as long as you combine it with good money management. The two depend on each other, or at least their success depends on a horse racing betting method that is based on this principle…
The reward must outweigh the risk, or put another way, your bets must have a positive rate of return. Horse players call it ROI. In business, we break down risk and reward into two separate categories. First, there is the return on investment. In other words, you must at least recoup your original investment or you will have lost money.
Second, there is the return on investment. The interest that increased. In other words, the benefit you get. When horse players talk about ROI, they usually include both forms of return in one. So if you bet $1,000 this week and get $1,200 back, your ROI is +1.20. Anything above 1.0 is a profit, and by the way, not a little trick when betting on something as risky as horse racing.
Start thinking in terms of judgment and money management and you can eventually make money betting on horse racing. Find a bet you have placed in the last 30 days that has shown a profit. Repeat it and demand fair value installments. Fair value odds simply mean that if you make that bet ten times, you may not win every time, but you will win enough money to cover the cost of all your bets plus a profit. If you spend $500 on bets and get more than $500, then you have been successful.
Just as an exercise in good money management, write down all your bets and keep the ones that are equal, i.e. bet for the same reasons on horses in similar situations, and then see how close you are to a positive ROI and how close you are to a positive ROI. changing the odds you will accept at the time of publication could result in a positive return. Once you’ve done that, you’ll have successfully combined judgment with money management.